Peter Urquhart, Associate Professor of Music Travels to Europe

Professor Peter Urquhart traveled this summer to several locations in Europe. While abroad he presented a paper at a conference in Vienna and worked on a number of projects that took him from Austria to Switzerland and France

"Turn the lights down low" : women's experiences of intimacy after childbirth : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Women navigate many social changes when they become mothers, often including considerable changes to intimate and sexual relationships. While maternal health care attends to various physical and emotional changes for women, it has emerged that many women experience dissatisfaction in their intimate relationships after birth. A literature review revealed that while many studies had investigated the sexual experiences of women postpartum, none had looked at the effect of dominant discourses within Western popular culture. This research aimed to explore how women make sense of changes to their intimate relationships following childbirth. Norms and assumptions about the effects of childbirth on women’s bodies and the implications of change to intimate relationships were examined. Six women between the ages of 25-45 who had given birth to a child in the last 10 years were interviewed in a conversational style about their experiences. A feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis was applied, attending to the dominant discourses and gendered power relations that enabled and limited positions for women. The analysis showed that normative discourse shaped not only how women experienced their bodies and intimate relationships, but every aspect of their lives including pregnancy, labour, mothering, unpaid and paid work. Furthermore, women were positioned through discourse and a gender binary as responsible for the household and childcare, as well as responsible for regulating and managing the intimate relationship. Ultimately the overriding experience of women in this research was that body changes and changes in the sexual relationship (overwhelmingly one of dissatisfaction) postpartum resulted in feelings of responsibility and guilt on the women’s behalf for failing the expectations of femininity and the obligations of neoliberalism. Instances of resistance and challenge to the dominant discourses were expressed, as were alternative discourses. This research provides an understanding of the effects of dominant discourses and the power relations implicit in them on women’s lived realities. This piece of research provides knowledge around contextual factors impacting on postpartum sexual health and postpartum body image. It may also provide the platform from which both professionals and women can discuss female bodies, including genitalia, and female sexuality in less 'troublesome' ways

Polymorphism and polymerisation of acrylic and methacrylic acid at high pressure

The polymorphism and polymerisation of two related acids have been investigated under high pressure conditions. Acrylic acid crystallises as a new polymorph at 0.65 GPa whilst methacrylic acid crystallises in a new polymorph at a higher pressure of 1.5 GPa. Both these new polymorphs exhibit similar hydrogen bonding motifs to the low temperature phases, however, the molecular packing differs significantly

People, place and fish: Exploring the Cultural Ecosystem Services of Inshore Fishing through Photography

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005) set out a framework for understanding the benefits that humans derive from the environment in order to inform decision making. It categorized these benefits as: provisioning services, such as food, water, timber; regulating services, such as climate control, waste, water quality; supporting services, such as soil formation, photosynthesis, nutrient cycling; and cultural services, such as recreational, spiritual and aesthetic benefits. Since then there has been a plethora of research and wider interest in devising ways of assessing and measuring those services (Haines-Young and Potschin, 2009; Sagoff, 2011; Shan and Swinton, 2011), often involving economic valuation techniques devised by economists and ecologists. While these can be useful for assessing the provisioning, supporting and regulating services, measuring or assessing the cultural services that humans receive from ecosystems has proved to be more problematic. However, there is increasing recognition of the role of multiple disciplines in understanding the complex and multi-faceted ways that ecosystems shape culture and cultural value

Failure of interpolation in the intuitionistic logic of constant domains

This paper shows that the interpolation theorem fails in the intuitionistic logic of constant domains. This result refutes two previously published claims that the interpolation property holds.Comment: 13 pages, 0 figures. Overlaps with arXiv 1202.1195 removed, the text thouroughly reworked in terms of notation and style, historical notes as well as some other minor details adde

Evaluation of the KA24 (Knowledge Access 24) service for health- and social-care staff in London and the south-east of England. Part 2: qualitative

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this two-part paper is to identify the main transferable lessons learned from both the quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the KA24 (Knowledge Access 24) service of online databases and selected full text journals for health and social care staff in London and the South-East of England. The objectives of the qualitative evaluation were to assess the enablers and barriers to usage, and to assess the impact of the service on patient care. METHODS: Telephone interviews (n=65) and a questionnaire survey (n=296) were conducted with various types of user, in various Trust settings. Some non-users were also contacted. Selection of interviewees and questionnaire recipients was not random, and aimed to cover all groups of users representatively. RESULTS: Results show that policy goals were being delivered, with indications of changes to clinical practice, and improved clinical governance. Promotion, training and support needs to be extensive, and tailored to needs, but users are not always aware they need training. The sharing of passwords cast doubts on the reliability of some usage data. CONCLUSIONS: Digital health library services, delivered at the point of care, are changing the way some clinicians practise. A combination of qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods are needed to assess digital library services

Cloud base height estimates from sky imagery and a network of pyranometers

Cloud base height (CBH) is an important parameter for physics-based high resolution solar radiation modeling. In sky imager-based forecasts, a ceilometer or stereographic setup is needed to derive the CBH; otherwise erroneous CBHs lead to incorrect physical cloud velocity and incorrect projection of cloud shadows, causing solar power forecast errors due to incorrect shadow positions and timing of shadowing events. In this paper, two methods to estimate cloud base height from a single sky imager and distributed ground solar irradiance measurements are proposed. The first method (Time Series Correlation, denoted as “TSC”) is based upon the correlation between ground-observed global horizontal irradiance (GHI) time series and a modeled GHI time series generated from a sequence of sky images geo-rectified to a candidate set of CBH. The estimated CBH is taken as the candidate that produces the highest correlation coefficient. The second method (Geometric Cloud Shadow Edge, denoted as “GCSE”) integrates a numerical ramp detection method for ground-observed GHI time series with solar and cloud geometry applied to cloud edges in a sky image. CBH are benchmarked against a collocated ceilometer and stereographically estimated CBH from two sky imagers for 15 min median-filtered CBHs. Over 30 days covering all seasons, the TSC method performs similarly to the GCSE method with nRMSD of 18.9% versus 20.8%. A key limitation of both proposed methods is the requirement of sufficient variation in GHI to enable reliable correlation and ramp detection. The advantage of the two proposed methods is that they can be applied when measurements from only a single sky imager and pyranometers are available

The RMS Survey: Resolving kinematic distance ambiguities towards a sample of compact HII regions using HI absorption

We present high-resolution HI data obtained using the Australia Telescope Compact Array to resolve the near/far distance ambiguities towards a sample of compact HII regions from the Red MSX Source (RMS) survey. The high resolution data are complemented with lower resolution archival HI data extracted from the Southern and VLA Galactic Plane surveys. We resolve the distance ambiguity for nearly all of the 105 sources where the continuum was strong enough to allow analysis of the HI absorption line structure. This represents another step in the determination of distances to the total RMS sample, which with over 1,000 massive young stellar objects and compact HII regions, is the largest and most complete sample of its kind. The full sample will allow the distribution of massive star formation in the Galaxy to be examined.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS. This paper consists of 15 pages and contains 10 figures and 5 table

Rise to the Challenge & Reach New Heights!

It has been quite a year since our last Women’s Summit – one filled with accomplishments, changes, and challenges. In the Fortune 500 annual list of top CEOs, women claimed 32 spots – a record number that included the first Latina. The reality, however, is that they make up just 6.2 percent of those listed, and U.S. women earn 20 percent less than men, on average. The painful experiences that many people encounter in their careers became public through revelations about misconduct that surfaced in entertainment, business, sports, the news media, and in politics. These events – which continue to come to light – have prompted national conversations about a topic too long in the shadows. Scores of people have rallied in support of those affected, while perpetrators face the consequences of their actions. Worldwide natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires made us appreciate the basic necessities that we often take for granted. Senseless acts of violence in Las Vegas, London, New York, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere shook us to the core and left many unanswered questions. Through it all, we were moved by the selflessness of first responders and volunteers, as well as the kindness and generosity of people everywhere. Personally, some of us faced our own health, financial, and workplace challenges or are caring for family members in need. How can we rise to meet these challenges? Whenever possible, we must proactively protect ourselves and our families. Taking control of our professional and personal success is essential in today’s world. Thankfully, more women and men have begun to work in partnership with their companies to create flexible options for career paths and advancement opportunities. But there is still more to be done. Leaders and managers must educate themselves about the realities their employees face each and every day. Managers should also review formal and informal career systems and expand career advancement paths to include options that align with employees’ diverse career lifecycles. At Bryant University, we design the Women’s Summit to inspire you – personally and professionally – as you manage life in challenging times. Workshop sessions about innovative thinking, financial empowerment, confidence building, improving communication skills, cybersecurity, diversity awareness, entrepreneurship, marketing, mentoring, and healthy lifestyles can help you achieve success and ensure future well-being. We look forward to welcoming you to the 2018 Women’s Summit: Rise to the Challenge and Reach New Heights! Sincerely, Kati Machtley Director, The Women’s Summit® Bryant Universit

The RMS Survey: 6 cm continuum VLA observations towards candidate massive YSOs in the northern hemisphere

(Abridged) Context: The Red MSX Source (RMS) survey is an ongoing multi-wavelength observational programme designed to return a large, well-selected sample of massive young stellar objects (MYSOs). We have identified $\sim$2000 MYSO candidates located throughout the Galaxy by comparing the colours of MSX and 2MASS point sources to those of known MYSOs. Aims: To identify the populations of UCHII regions and PNe within the sample and examine their Galactic distribution. Method: We have conducted high resolution radio continuum observations at 6 cm towards 659 MYSO candidates in the northern hemisphere (10\degr< l < 250\degr) using the VLA. In addition to these targeted observations we present archival data towards a further 315 RMS sources extracted from a previous VLA survey of the inner Galaxy. Results: We find radio emission towards 272 ($\sim$27% of the observed sample). Using results from other parts of our multi-wavelength survey we separate these RMS-radio associations into two distinct types of objects, classifying 51 as PNe and a further 208 as either compact or UC HII regions. Using this well selected sample of HII regions we estimate their Galactic scale height to be 0.6\degr. Conclusions: Using radio continuum and archival data we have identified 79 PNe and 391 HII regions within the northern RMS catalogue. We estimate the total fraction of contamination by PNe in the RMS sample is of order 10%. The sample of HII regions is probably the best representation to date of the Galactic population of HII regions as a whole.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 15 pages, 9 figures and 5 tables. Full versions of Tables 3, 4 and 5 and Figs. 2, 4 and 7 will only be available via CDS or the RMS website at http:/www.ast.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/RMS/RMS_VLA_IMAGES.cg